As solar capacity surpasses two terawatts and deployment accelerates toward annual additions of more than one terawatt, the industry faces an urgent challenge: scaling the workforce to meet global demand. The Global Solar Training Standards, developed by the Global Solar Council and GWO, aim to provide a unified framework for technician training, ensuring consistent safety, skills and mobility across markets while supporting the rapid expansion of utility-scale solar projects worldwide.
Over the past decade, solar power has transformed from a fast growing clean technology into the backbone of the global energy transition. What was once considered a niche industry has become one of the world’s most significant sources of new electricity generation.
In 2024, global installed solar capacity surpassed two terawatts, doubling the first terawatt reached only two years earlier and confirming solar as the fastest-growing power technology worldwide.
The pace of growth shows no sign of slowing and to meet the rising electricity demand, solar deployment will need to accelerate dramatically in the coming decade. From 2030 onwards, the industry is expected to add more than one terawatt of new solar capacity every year.
Achieving that scale of deployment will require an unprecedented expansion of the global workforce, with hundreds of thousands of additional technicians needed to build, install and maintain solar projects around the world.